The ‘Performance’ of an Easter Festival on an Island Community: Bringing Communities Together or Entertaining Tourists?

This chapter reviews the historical and contemporary community patterns of residence and community experience on Lindisfarne (Holy Island). In doing so, the chapter explores the concept of ‘front’ and ‘back’ regions of the island (Boissevain, 1996) and the capacity of the island to resist the excesses of the tourist gaze (Urry, 1990). The chapter provides empirical insights on the rituals of ‘performing’ pilgrimage along the route to Holy Island and during the Christian Festival of Easter. It considers how the role of this festival might reinforce the unique sense of place of Holy Island, and as an event which adds to the further secularisation of the island as part of the world of tourism (Graburn, 1983).